About John Lorenzo

Retired Chief of Marine Police

Southbury, CT

John Lorenzo created the Lake Lillinonah Authority (LLA) patrol in Connecticut in 1972
and served as Chief of Marine Police for 20 years. A veteran of the Korean War, he
created the patrol in order to make the lake a safer environment. Initially, the patrol
consisted of John and his boat serving on a voluntary basis, but by the time John retired
in 1993 the patrol had twenty-eight officers.

As someone who devoted much of his life to the safety of his fellow citizens, John
observed the enormous waste of resources and loss of life caused by the war on drugs and
gradually came to the realization that he supported the legalization and regulation of
all drugs. Drugs cause danger and suffering, he says, but their illegal status does not
reduce that danger and instead causes additional widespread violence, breaking up
families and hurting communities in the process.

For John, the “straw that broke the camel’s back” was the killing of Guadalupe mayor
Manuel Lara Rodriguez. The murder took place in Mexico’s region of Chihuahua, which
borders the United States and is plagued with daily violence as rival drug cartels wage
gangland warfare. As John puts it, he does not advocate drug use, but he also does not
advocate policies that result in violence and murder. Compare the regulation of alcohol
after prohibition: when John was patrolling, he was able to spend his time effectively
enforcing the intoxicated operating rules because he was not fruitlessly chasing alcohol
possessors or responding to tragic violence related to an illegal alcohol market.

John’s practical views on the drug war are partially based on his unique career. In
addition to serving as chief of police, John was also an electrical engineer who was
awarded fifteen US patents over the course of his twenty-year career. He attended the
University of Connecticut and graduated from the University of Bridgeport with an
electrical engineering degree. He also attended and taught courses at the Creative
Problem Solving Institute at the State University of New York at Buffalo. Currently, he
lives in Southbury, CT where he and his wife Joyce volunteer for various community
causes.